Merry christmas!

So you remember my death knight got a vacation because of burnout issue? So, to relax before his ship to Northrend arrive he bought a ticket for the Brawler Guild. He actually had a blast early in the morning, there was nobody there and he had time to reaching rank 6 with a mix of blood tanking and frost dpsings. There is monk heirloom, pets and titles to get! Only thirty minutes before departure, his beeper ring: Prince Anduin was in trouble again! So he had to get back to Pandaria and rescue Anduin from Garrosh and his crazy scheme and barely made it to catch his ship. Year 2013 will be a busy year with the Thunder king and Garrosh to take care of, so he will be glad to take some time off.

Anyway, on the eve of christmas, my death knight and my army of alts wanted to tell you: Merry christmas and happy new year!

Update: If you want your christmas presents, that might contains various recipes and pets, and the linked Feat of strenght you'll need to do the daily You're a Mean One.

Death knight brooding in Pandaria

So my death knight has lapsed back into depression after months of campaneering in Pandaria. At first, he tought that the excitement of a military life will give him a new purpose in life. He scouted Pandaria and acted as diplomats for numerous factions. He tanked for masses of ungrateful, ninja'ing pug's in dungeons across the continent. He repelled waves of Mogus attacks and hunted them down in Mogushan Vaults, killed the Empress of the Mantids in the Heart of Fear and pursued the Sha of fear to the Terrace of Endless Springs. He lead the landing of the Alliance on the beach of Karasang, mounting countless attacks against the Horde. He acquired a legendary sha-touched weapon guided by a new shady leader. And then what? More grinding against pitiful and weak foes. But one particular event pushed him over the edge. While performing administrative duty (mostly spying) for Prince Anduin, one of his superiors questionned his new outfit, wondering if it was fit for a death knight officer. Maybe my death knight spent too much time in the Black Temple frolicking with warlocks and it's other demonic inhabitants.

Anyway, he asked for a release from the army but his superior refused and told him to take a couple of weeks off instead. But now he has heard the calling of home again while aiding fellow guildies acquiring the legendary Shadowmourne. He now dreams of replacing Bolvar Fordragon as king of the Icecrown Citadel and as ruler of Northrend

As for my paladin, as soon as he got to max level, he rushed back to his camp in Blackrock mountain. He is happy for now fighting against hordes of fire elementals, dragons, orcs and evil dwarfs. And he won't be able to rest until all evil has been purged from the mountain (or until he gets all the cool transmog and that pesky legendary drop).

While those two heroes of the Alliance are off chasing dreams and pursuing evil, my horde hunter is eager to join the fray and will take the opportunity to explore Pandaria. There is rare pets to tame and tons of hunter weapons to acquire!

Soloing Blackwing Lair

In the last post I mentionned that I tried to solo Blackwing Lair on my pally but after a couple of tries I asked a friend for help. This week my buddy wasn't online and guildies were busy so I realized I was on my own. So I clenched my teeth and decided to venture in there alone.

The first fight in Blackwing lair is against Razorgore. You need to control the boss by clicking an orb and destroy all the eggs in the room using his abilities. The tricky parts to that fight is that there tons of adds that will attack Razorgore and if he dies, he blow up the raid (that means you). But while browsing the web for tips I found a video made by a guy named Swunt who told exactly how to do this. The trick is that since he is friendly while you control him, you have the time to cast one instant heal, it will break the control and make him hostile again but he will be healed. I only had to use Lay on hand halfway through the fight and it gave me enough time to destroy all the eggs. When like five or so adds are on Razorgore I stopped using the controlling orb (to interrupt control I used the simple macro /dance) and cleared some adds so he wouldn't get overhelmed. After the boss destroy all the eggs, he will get back to full health, about 500 k, and you can put him down once for all (until the weekly reset).

The second boss, Vaelastrasz, is a dps race because he inflicts a debuff, called Burning Adrenaline, that reduce max health by 5% every second, so you have 20 second to down him. The debuff didn't seem to be dispellable so if you down him you'll probably have to corpse run.

After this, you'll have to kill some annoying thrash. First there is some dragonkin that will sent you in the air dealing some fall damage that could take out a careless level 90. Then, it's the supressor room that reduce movement and attack speed, meaning a long walk while aggroing tons of annoying whelpings. The third boss, Broodlord Lashlayer, has nothing special so just bash his head in and be done with him.

Then come more thrash, only one add is worth mentionning: Blackwing spellbinder, who are apparently immune to spells, so you'll have to beat on them the old fashioned way. While fighting this thrash you will also encounter three patrolling drakes that are considered bosses: Flameroc, Firemaw and Ebonroc. Only the last one gave me trouble, he puts a debuff, called Shadow of Ebonroc, that when he hits you also heals him up for 25k. I didn't knew that when I encountered him so I just outdpsed his healing but it took me a couple of minutes. Some of the tips I've seen would be to dispell the debuff, put on tanking gear with high mitigation so you don't get hit as often, get high shadow resistance so the debuff has less chance to be applied or just kite him.

The seventh boss is Chromaggus, it can be a challenge for some class that can't dispel. He will put five different affliction (debuff) on you, a magic, a curse, a poison, a disease and another one that can be cured with Hourglass Sand. If you have the five debuff, you will be mind controlled for five minutes, so try to avoid this. I didn't realize I could Cleanse the debuff when I did it, so I just spammed Hourglass Sand when I got the Bronze affliction and I blew all my DPS cooldown to down him as fast as I could and it worked. After the fight, I also removed all debuff with Divine Shield, so it could also have helped during the encounter. For classes who cannot cleanse, you could try to get some potions that can cleanse like Purification potion.

And finally, the last boss: Nefarian. After all you've been through this fight is ridiculously easy. Kill a metric tons of adds and switch to Nefarian when he is in dragon form. Among some of the cool things that dropped from him is what is considered by some to be the coolest 2-handed sword in the game: Ashkandi, Greatsword of the Brotherhood (wich apparently belonged to Andui Lothar, one of the most famous heroe of Azeroth). So I hope you'll have fun soloing Blackwing lair. Good hunting!

Patch 5.1: First impression

The first content patch since the launch of the expansion two months ago was released last week. There is no new raids in this patch, akin to 4.1 Rise of the Zandalari but instead of introducing new dungeons, this time it's three new scenarios, with two of them that are faction specific.

One of the major feature of this patch is two new factions, Operation: Shieldwall for Alliance and Dominance Offensive for Horde, with new sets of dailies. Both armies have landed on Karasang Wilds beach. As your hero knows the way of the land better then anyone else, you participate in the landing of the military forces. You'll meet a couple of familiar faces, clashes with the opposing faction and stroll around two brand new military bases (Alliance and Horde). After a short questline, dailies are unlocked. I bought a nice looking trinket from the quartermaster, even tough it was ilvl 458 Mr. Robot told me it was better then what I had. Doing the dailies will also nets you reputation for Wrathion, and it's linked to his legendary quest line. But I still have to collect a couple of sigil of wisdom to unlock the new quests from him.

After I reached friendly with that new faction, a new quest appeared that sent me back to Stormwind to re-enlist a retired spy who was hiding out in a mysterious place, Bizmo Brawlpub. This place houses the Brawler's guild that organize one-on-one fight against various opponents and beasts. Everybody can hang out there but to participate you need to get a Blood-Soaked invitation either from the Black auction house in the Veiled stairs or from certain mobs of the opposite faction in Karasang Wilds. That's one thing I'd like to try eventually.

One quality of life improvement, especially for people like me who are behind in their dailies, is the new Grand commendation that you can buy from quartermaster of the pandaria faction once you reach revered. Those commendation double the amount of experience you can get from dailies.

Another quality of life improvement of this patch is that you no longer need to be in a raid to enter the older raids, plus they nerfed some boss that were impossible (or very difficult) to solo. As an incentive, new pets drops from some bosses of the vanilla wow raids (all the level 60 raids plus Naxrammas who was originally in Eastern Plaguelands before reappearing in Northrend). So I headed to Blackwing lair with my pally, a place I don't go often because the first boss, Razorgore, needs more then one person to down. But that raid contains the famous Tier 2 pieces paladin set wich I'm collecting (plus Sulfuron ingot needed for the Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker legendary quest).

For those who haven't been there (or if it's been a long time), Razorgore is a boss that must be mind controlled to destroy dragons eggs while tons of adds try to kill him and the one controlling him. If he dies before all the eggs are destroyed, everyone in the room die. But now he has more health points and the damage done to the person controlling the boss no longer break concentration. So I tried soloing him with my pally but the boss kept dying from the adds. Hopefully, one of my friend logged on and offered to help. There is one or two bosses that might be tough to solo like Vaelastrasz (he puts a debuff that can kill a level 90) and Chromagus (when you got five different debuff you are controlled for five minutes).

So there is a lot of exciting things to do in the new patch. Good hunting!

Into the heart of fear - LFR

Fabad, blogger extraordinaire, is reporting inside the inside the Heart of fear with a small assault force wich is bent on eradicating the insects problem of the Dread Waste.

Doing thoses fights on the LFR at the release I noticed a step up in difficulty compared to Mogushan Vault. So I decided to make a general guidelines for the bosses you'll encounter there from a melee DPS point of view. But as I was writing this post, LFR got hit by a series of nerf that trivialized even more most of those fights. Anyway, it's done, so here it is:

Imperial Vizier Zor'Lok: The first boss you'll encounter, you will have to follow him to three different platforms where he will have different abilities. 
- Attenuation: You need to dodge discs he sends all around him in a spiral.
- Convert: He will control 3 raid member, dps them to 50% to free them.
- Force and verve: that is a damage raid wide ability where you have to run to an area protected by a yellow protective barrier to mitigate damage.
When he reach 40%, he will move to the center and uses all three abilities. If you were mindlessy dpsing away, now would probably be a good time to pay attention to the fight, so try to stay alive until he die.

Blade Lord Ta'yak: This boss has one ability called Unseen strike that targets a random player but all damage is spread between people that are in the vicinity. The guy who is targeted will have a red arrow on his head, so stack on him or he will be one-shotted. The boss has another ability that prevents players to just stack in one place for all the fight, it's called Wind step and it will hit a random player and the one who are within 8 yards of him, so it's better to be a little spread out if you can. Also tornadoes will spawn during the fight, so move away from them. At 20% health, another phase begin. He will teleport to an end of the corridor and you've got to chase him as he will send tornadoes down the corridor. Dodge them and be wary of spots on the floor indicating a tornado will spawn when you got near him. At 10% health, he will move to the other end of the corridor, so rinse and repeat .

Garalon: This giant bug should be kited around  the area by dedicated healers or ranged that knows what they're doing, while the two tanks stays in front of him at all time. Because, if the boss cleave doesn't hit two player, he gets a stackable buff called Fury. Since it's LFR, there is a chance that the raid will completely ignore that mechanic and let one of the tank kite him. So help the healers by minimizing the damage you take and use self heals when you have to. DPS must focus on the legs to slow him, the damage you do on the legs will also reduce Garalon total health pool. Bonus: if you are within 12 yards of the leg you got a 100% damage increase buff. Apart from the cleave, you must avoid stepping on the pheremone trail left behind by the kiter. And most importantly, you must be careful not to get under Garalon (indicated by a purple circle) or it will trigger the Massive Crush ability wich is raid wide damaging attack and would probably kill you if you are under him.

This finish the first wing of Heart of fear, come back when you're done to read the second parts.

Wind Lord Mel'jarak: In this fight, there will be nine adds of three type (all adds of a same type share the same health pool):
- Menders who cast an interruptable heal.
- Blademasters who simultaneously charge a random player.
- Trappers that have two abilities: Amber Prison that will cc a player (right click the player to remove it) and a debuff call Corrosive resin that can be removed by moving but will leave a residue in the path of the player.

Only four adds can be crowd controlled (CC) at one time or CC's will be reset. I found out that the best way to do this boss is to mark the adds that will be have to be kept CC'ed: two Menders, one Blademaster and one Trapper. CC'ing one blademaster will reduce the damage done to the random player that will be charged. Mark the remaining Mender who will be focused on first and mark a Blademaster who will be focused next, then finish off the Trappers. After this the boss can be defeated pretty easily. Another way, typical of LFR, is to pull before the CC are done and gather all the adds in a pack and AoE them down, it's just that it takes longer.

Amber-Shaped Un'sok: One of the most important ability of this boss is that he will transform a random player in a mutated construct. For the first phase, only the tanks will be transformed but in the subsequent phase any player can. When mutated, the player must use two abilities: if the construct is casting Amber explosion use Struggle for control to interrupt, else use Amber Strike on cooldown wich stack a debuff on the boss. The dps need to burn both the boss and the construct because if it ran out of energy, the mutated player will died. That player is automatically released when it health reach 10% in LFR. Otherwise, if you are targeted by Amber scalpel, kite it away from other people.

Phase two start when boss reach 70% health. All dps must switch to Amber Monstrosity and the controlled player. If you are mutated, try to interrupt Amber explosion of the Monstrosity as much as possible by using Amber Strike.

Phase three starts when the Monstrosity is dead. You can switch dps back to boss. It's a burn phase so just go crazy on dps.

Grand Empress Shek'zeer: That fight is pretty straightforward for dps in LFR. You will alternate between dpsing the boss and the adds when the Empress retreats. When adds comes out, focus on the smaller one first then take out the big one. If an add focus on you, just kite it. After two wave of adds, you wont need to switch again, just dps that big girl.

Some sha-touched weapon drops from the Empress but if you are plate dps, you will have to wait for the Terrace of endless spring to get one. Sha-Touched weapon can be gemmed with a legendary gem given by the black Prince at the end of his legendary questline.

Pro-tip:  Enjoy a meal at the Thanksgiving table near the Storwmwind gates to get a +10% reputation buff.

Golden lotus finale

Warning: this post contains spoilers.

So I finally reached exalted with the Golden Lotus faction. Upon reaching exalted, you collect a quest that triggers the final attack of the Mogu on the Vale of Eternal Blossom. Remember all the Thunder King artefacts you collected when you reached revered? Well, they have been stolen and Mogus are attacking the Vale in force joined by Quillen and animated jade statue. Helped by the gods of the panadaria pantheon you slaughter hundreds of Mogus. After this you got to fight against the head of the Shao Tien clan that is operating in the Vale.

That battle takes place in front of the gate of Mogushan Palace. I must admit I died a couple of times getting used to the fight, that warlord is not a pushover. There is two mechanics that you must be aware of. First, the warlord will throw a spear of lightning on the ground, you must pick it up and throw it back at him before it does big AoE damage. Second, there is walls of lightning that you must jump over or take huge damage that will quickly kills you.

It's worth the efforts tough because defeating him is a huge setback for the Mogus and you are awarded an epic necklace (wich went for my tanking offspec since I had already one from the Klaxxi). Still no words about the whereabouts of the Thunder king that got ressurected by the the Zandalari, so there might be more Mogu action coming up later.

Altough I liked the dailies I'm glad that I can take a break from them so I'll have more time for the other factions, I still have to do Klaxxi, Shadopan, August Celestial and Order of the Cloud Serpent. Since this the Golden Lotus faction unlocks two important faction I'll probably have to do it with my others alts but I'll wait for the reputation gain bonus that is coming with patch 5.1.

Daily pro-tips: Orcish Army Knife and Wow insider recently made posts about dailies tips, I recommend you to go ahead and take a look yourself. Here is one of my favorite: You can mount for the quest Free spirits, makes it a lot quicker!

Mopping up the mogu

After conquering Mogushan Vaults, the heroes of the Alliance and the Horde set their sights on the sha corrupted Empress of the Mantids, in the Heart of fear. Before heading into that new raid I tought it would be good time to take a look at the lore behind the Mogu.

The Mogu were scattered and in hiding for thousands of years, since the time they were beaten by our newfound friends the pandarens, but they have recently began to resurface. They are brutes that delights in torturing and dominating other races. In the Jade Forest, we had our first encounter with them. They were trying to enslave pandarans and instillating souls into statues to animate them. In the Valley of the Emperor, located in the Kun-Lai Summit zone, we saw them working with the Zandalari troll pillaging the tombs of the ancient Pandaria emperors. They were looking for relics of power and the remains of the Thunder King, the first Mogu emperor. Despite your efforts, the Zandalari managed to resuscitate the Thunder King and he escaped.

The Zandalari tribe is on the run since they betrayed the Alliance and the Horde during the Cataclysm. They tried to unite all the troll tribes and to summon Hakkar the soulflayer, an ancient blood god. But now it appears that they came back to Pandaria and have renewed their alliance with the Mogu. Having dealt with the Zandalari before, we can wonder if they are helping the Mogu take back the throne of Pandaria or if they just want to appropriate some of the Mogu ancient artefacts for themselves.

When your character reach the Vale of the Eternal Blossom, he sees the towering twin statues of the Mogu and the ancient Palace of the emperor. This place is called Mogushan Palace and is one of the Mogu base of operation. Three of the greatest tribes of Mogu gathered there under  the leadership of Xin the Weaponmaster. Fortunately, internal bickering, Saurok looters and dashing band of heroes stopped short his plan to restore Mogu to their former glories.

When your character come back to the Vale at level 90, you are tasked to help the Golden Lotus, a secret organisation that is dedicated to fighting the Mogu. So you undertakes a series of dailies that consist of skirmishes at the Golden Stairs, Mistfall village, Golden Petal Lake and Guo-Lai ruins. In Guo-Lai Halls the Mogu are animating an armie of Jade statue to bolster there army. Later on, you seek out the helm and weapons of the Thunder King that are hidden throughout the Vale. Altough, I have not seen the end of the storyline with the Golden Lotus, I am confident that we will foil whatever attempt of the Mogu to take back the Vale.

So that takes us to the first raid in Pandaria, the Vault of Mysteries. It is guarded by Quilien statues and spirits of ancient powerful mogu. Just before the entrance to the deeper parts of the Vault, the raid encounter a troll tomb looting party lead by Gara'jal the Spiritbinder. Then it is revealed that a Titan artefact of immense power rest in the vaults. This artefacts was repurposed to create an endlessa army of Mogu and is destroyed by your raid group.

It seems that the mogu threat is contained for now. So the heroes of Azeroth can focus their attention to the mantids and the Sha. That is unless a full blown war erupts between the Alliance and the Horde.

How to keep track of your Soul reaper ability?

When I leveled my Death Knight I trained a new ability called Soul reaper and I put it on my bar but I didn't give it much toughts. That was until I learned that it was an essential part of the DK rotation while browsing the Icy Veins website

Anyway, Soul reaper  does major damage and should be part of your rotation against bosses but you have to apply it to the target when they are under 35% health. So it's kind of the DK version of Execute. That ability was previously used by the Lich king, that's cool, we can always use more tricks from the best.

The default UI of World Warcraft doesn't help since there is is no procs flashing in the screen that tells us to use it. So I browsed around the web and found out a addon called Weak Aura that will alert you when the health of the targets is below 35%.

I just made a quick guideline on how to configure it for Soul Reaper so you will be up and running in less then a minute. I downloaded this addon using Curse client, wich make installing way easier. After this, log into World of warcraft with your DK to get started:

- Type /wa.
- Make sure New is selected so you can create a new custom proc.
- Choose a new Texture and name it in a meaningful way, like Soul Reaper.
- On the Display tab, press Choose to select an alert, I use the first PowerAura Heads-Up called Runed text but it's up to you.
- Select the Trigger tab to customize Trigger 1.
- Select status for Type, it will be health.
- Select target for Unit
- Check Health (%), with Health (%) < 35.
- On the Load tab, just check In Combat and Player class, that would be Death Knight.

So what are you waiting for? Go reap some souls!

How to get into raid finder

So you've probably ventured into the Raid finder, if not just log into world of warcraft, press Ctrl-I and come read this post after. A full month after the release of Mogushan Vault, the sixth november, two new raids will be released for LFR, Heart of fear and the Terrace of Endless Springs. Except the item level requirement is a little tighter this time: 470. So you might be thinking something like how I am gonna pull that off if I dont raid on normal mode and that the gear that drops from heroics is only ilvl 463?

First, let's just summarize how ilvl is calculated. It's simply the mean of all the item you have equiped, so if you have a 2-hander it's the sum of all your slots divided by 15. Except it's the highest ilvl item you have or had equiped in each particular slot. That allows you to cheese the ilvl requirement, like if I got the Coren's Cold Chromium Coaster (ilvl 470) in my first trinket slot and a heroic piece in my second trinket slot (ilvl 463). If I just switch the two trinkets (rings or 1-hander), then the ilvl of both slots will be 470.

The raid finder ilvl requirement for Mogushan Palace is 460 and is kinda easy to get. If you haven't yet, now would be a good time to replace your Dragon soul gear from last expansion with leveling gear, particularly the one from the last zone, Dread Waste. Next, you will have to do a gearing list. I have one but it's boring so instead I will refer you to WoW insider warrior column who did an excellent article of where to obtain heroic pieces into each slot for dps and tank. Even if I don't have a level capped warrior, it helped me make my list for my death knight (for non plate class, you'll probably find a gear list in another colums of WoW insider). Before you hope in heroics, do yourself a favor and grab a decent weapon from the Arena of annhilation scenario. So if you just chain runs heroics until your eyes bleed you'll replace every single piece of your equipment with heroic pieces and you'll have the required ilvl requirement. But I'm way too lazy to do this and instead I just tried to fill the slots with some easy to get epic pieces. So I'll tell you where to look for them and it can help you get the required ilvl for the two upcoming raids. While I've linked pieces that has strength, you will always be offered or have the choice to pick a piece appropriate for your class.

One easy piece to get is the ring from the Headless Horseman, just queue for him until you get it. And if you do him once a day, you have the chance to get the Headless Horseman helm or his agility sword. That weapon could also be of use for dual wielding death knight because it has higher damage per second then a heroic 1-handed weapon.

Since you want to raid, you should sharpen your teeth with some entry level bosses that doesn't require gear. In the previous expansion, your faction had to control Tol Barad before you could join a group to go in Baradin hold. In Pandaria, you can beat world bosses just by joinning a pug (or with your guild if you can muster fourty or so people). The first world boss is the Sha of anger, this loot pinata drops tier 14 and pvp pieces. But don't forget to loot him because he will also give a quest wich rewards a nice pair of epic boots. The other world boss is called Salyis's Warband, I haven't tried yet but drops higher level piece so he might be a little bit tougher.

After this, make a stop at the quartermaster in the Niuzao temple. You can spend all your justice points as a stop gap measure for a slot you didn't had any luck filling. Then you can spend your valor points, the only problem is that you'll need to acquire some reputation with the different faction. The easiest to get is the neck piece since if you do all the quest in dread waste you will already be honored with the Klaxxi.

You will also need to grind the Golden Lotus faction, not only because of faction reward, but also because they unlock two other faction that have epic rewards, August Celestial and Shadopan.

Keep working for the Klaxxi faction, because at revered they have some nice reward and a quest chain that rewards an epic ring. Plus if you have a blacksmith, you will be able to get some epic crafting recipe for the chest and gloves. If not you could buy those on the AH or ask a guildies to craft it, but those are expensive so it would probably require some money. Try to make use of your profession, like engineering, if you can.

But more importantly, you need to run raid finder every week, eventually you'll get some drops. Get some Elder charms of good fortune and spend them, that's how I got lucky. And  you got to start collecting those sigils, a chance to get legendaries!

Darkmoon faire rabbit

Last saturday, one guildie told us in chat that he had spotted the killer rabbit world boss in the Darkmoon faire. The rabbit is an obvious reference to the movie Monthy Python and the quest for the holy grail where king Arthur managed to kill the infamous rabbit with a holy grenade after losing several knights.

My death knight headed at the entrance of the cave with a couple of guildies. It was exciting because the guild didn't want other people from the server to steal our kills. So no spamming general or trade chat to get more people. Hopefully it was saturday night and darkmoon faire was pretty quiet. We were only a dozen, so we whispered peoples from another friendly guild to get some help. Thanks to one of our warlock guildie, everybody was soon at the entrance and ready to give it a shot.

The general strategy was to zerg the rabbit and run back to the cave if we died. I had offered to tank and I managed to survived the whole encounter. The rabbit is immune to taunt and randomly jump on people to eat their face while the person is screaming in chat and running around. It's a pretty hectic fight and after a couple of minutes I started laughing, realising how that fight was just silly.

We actually did it with 25 or so people but it took about 10 minutes. The loot was a mini killer rabbit pet. I'm not a huge pet collector so I didn't mind losing the roll to the guildie who actually spotted the rabbit at the beginning. I know one of the first kill of that world boss on our server was done by 40 level 85 (just before the expansion) so I was impressed that my guild actually managed to down him since were not actually a raiding guild (but level 90 and gears helps I guess).

Serious skills to pay the bills

Fabad managed to get the achievement Serious skills to pay the bills by finishing archeology.

Archeology is a lot easier to level this time and when maxed you can exchange research crate that you craft for artifacts of other races like the Tolvir. I got Vial of the sands wich is a pretty lucky drop. I still have to gather the mats, something I will do later on. But I'm done with archeology and fishing for a while.

Leveling fishing and cooking isn't so bad if you are doing the dailies, there is some with the Tillers and the Anglers, plus those in Stormwind. And now Fabad farm has grown now and he can gather different mats instead of vegetables, like motes of harmony, herbs, enchanting stuff and such.

What now? My Death knight was getting tired of petty skirmishes between the Alliance and the Horde. Fortunately he met a new employer: Wrathion, the Black Prince, son of Deathwing. What could have convinced him to obey such a shady individual? Legendaries, of course! So he is back into grinding LFR and dailies, Golden Lotus and the Klaxxis.

Protip: Use your newly leveled professions to craft some high level stuff that will appeal to raiders. Everybody is trying to gear up, so the beginning of an expansion is a good time to make a profit. For example: meta gems, shoulder inscriptions, weapon enchants and belt buckle. Another thing is darkmoon cards that are used to make epic trinkets but you gotta hurry because the faire is almost over.

On profession

Remember when I told you that my death knight wanted to have a farm? Well, he now has one. But there is still much to do for him as he expand his farm by doing dailies with the Tillers. He also paid a visit to Nat Pagle in Karasang Wild who now has his own faction. Grinding those two factions is a fun way to level cooking and fishing and the pandarian Way of cooking yield plenty of buff foods.

I find that professions are easier and more fun to level in this expansion. Like for alchemy, there is only a couple of recipe that are trainable, the others are discovered while crafting potions and such. My specialisation is transmute and I've made some money by selling my cooldown and procs of Living steel and Primal diamond.

My inscriptionnist alt didnt had to leave Stormwind to level his profession and that's a good thing because he was also acting as my banker. Like I told you I didn't leave pandaria until I was level capped but I needed someone in Stormwind to sell extra stuff because I didn't found auction house on pandaria (except the black market AH).

Gathering profession like herbalism and mining were super easy to level since there is plenty of nodes everywhere and they respawn fast. A good item for gatherers is the Mist-piercing googles that can be crafted by engineers. Also other item like Thermal anvil is a nice utility. The good old Gnomish army knife, skinning knife or mining pick are now optionnal but gives a nice +10 boost to gathering.

I've also leveled first aid fairly easily since there is got plenty of cloth while questing. Next professions that I will level will be blacksmithing and enchanting. And after this maybe I'll give archeology a shot. From what I understand, it will be possible to trade relics from pandaria for relics of other races. The Lorewalkers faction will also give you two items that will speed up your digging. One of there newest member, Brann Bronzebeard, will exchange relics of Pandaria for relics from the other races. So archeology might be a little more fun this time around.

Still not convinced? If your guild level all the profession to 600, you got heirloom pants as perk!

On dungeons

Fabad, my DK, is now on the brinks of the Dread Waste, the last zone of Pandaria. The introductory zone had us meeting and chilling out with a peaceful and fun loving race, the pandareans. But soon after this we witness the Sha escaping from they're prisons and the ressurection of the ancient ruler of Pandaria, the evil Mogu. Deeper in the continent the land is ravaged by the Yaungol and the Mantids. It seems like Pandaria is under a lot of strains.

Anyway, remember that I told you Fabad was there for the riches? Well, he found some running new dungeons as Frost. The first two are Temple of the Jade Serpent and Stormstout Brewery. There is two chain quests that culminates in those dungeons and you got to see the layout and some mini-boss fight before actually running the place with a party. I found the end boss of the temple trickiest, party members must dps the adds quickly before they explode.

The dungeon of Mogashu Palace is the one where Fabad found abundant treasure (unfortunately he only managed to pick a fraction of it, must be the dungeon tax). That instance went well,  it has ton of mobs, a hidden passageway and lots of gold lying around. The tank even took the time to show the party where some ancients relics were hidden.

The last dugheon is Shado-pan Monastery. The mobs has some interesting mechanics like Volatile Fiend exploding and Fragment of hatred needing to be purified. Last boss was scary but we managed to one shot it.

Fabad soloed and grouped for a couple of rare along the way. I used my Blood offspec for survivability but I kept my dps gear. At level 90, I guess most of the classes and specs would be able to solo them.There is abilities that need to be avoided or interrupted, so it can be a challenge.

Pro-tip for DK: If you got a weapon upgrade, take the time to travel to Ebon Hold (back in Eastern plagueland) to apply Rune of the fallen crusader.

Why do we fight?

So why do we fight?

Is it for honor?
For riches?
To protect those you love?

Anduin the prince of Stormwind has gone missing near the coast of Pandaria. So yesterday at midnight, my Death knight was sent along a small elite force to find him. As soon as they reached the shore they clashed with the Horde. Having superior firepower the battle was soon over but the small unit discovered a strange force, the Sha, who feeds of emotions and had already starting corrupting our ennemies. No need to say, my death knight helped by SI:7 managed to locate the Prince but they couldn't persuade him to leave Pandaria.

What Fabad liked the most in his first day? It was hanging out with the monks. He learned the ten thousands strikes form, he did some drill on the trainning dummy and he fought other monks. And he also spent a lot of times meditating, cooking, brewing, eating and drinking with his new found friends.

So why do we fight? For Fabad, this question remains unanswered. But so far he likes the journey.

Fall of Theramore

I must admit I was disappointed that there was no world event before the launch of MoP but I had a lot of fun farming the scenario Fall of Theramore trying to upgrade some pieces of gear. So I took this occasion to present you two of my alts that will be making an appearance from time to time in my blog: Xileh, a tauren hunter of the horde and Bornbad a dwarf pally of the Alliance.

Early in the morning, the Horde attacked Theramore. The siege didn't went as planned and my hunter was called in reinforcement. He had to sabotage the Alliance ships and tanks, cut off the reinforcement by slaughtering the flight master and rescue a spy in the jail of the Theramore barracks. The spy then informed him that the entire thing was a diversion to nuke the city. The tauren comes from a peaceful race and, even if he has embraced the brutality of the Horde, he wasn't entirely sure if this was a good thing. He sometimes miss the times when Thrall was in command but he wisely keep that to himself. Oh well, at least he got a nice looking gun.

Soon after that, it was time for my pally to join the fray altough he was now fighting in the ruins of Theramore. While he was bombing ships, destroying siege engine and killing various Horde personnel he had a strange sense of deja vu but he quickly dismissed those toughts. He then proceeded to defended Jaina who was busy attuning to the Focusing Iris. That artefact was used by the Horde to build a mana bomb. Didn't we retrieve it for Thrall so he could take down Deathwing? I guess you should never trust an hordie. My pally didn't know what to say to Jaina, she seemed pissed off. And I'm not sure about her new hair color.

Good hunting!

Waiting for Pandaria

The new expansion of World of Warcraft is at our doorstep. In Mist of Pandaria, I'll be leveling a couple of toons, I have a paladin and a druid on Alliance side and a hunter Horde side. I'm not in a raiding guild but I'll take advantage of the raid finder to see as much content as I can. Other then that I intend to do a lot of dungeons and scenarios, maxing professions and do some achievements hunting.

The first toon I will level will be Fabad, my human death knight. I switched to paladin during the Cataclysm since they were more popular for tanking and I also wanted to try healing. I liked the paladin tanking a lot and I had fun trying to reach to block cap. But now Blood DK are talk of the town with they're amazing survivability and I'm loving it.

Let me give you a little background on Fabad. He was a seasoned veteran even before he was a death knight, being a level 58 knight of the Silver Hand, and he died at the hands of the Scourge while protecting Lordaeron. After he was raised into undeath, he went to  Northrend and never looked back. But after he defeated the Lich king his (undead) life lost it's meanings. At first, he tought that hunting evil and protecting Azeroth would give his life a new purpose but he soon felt into a depression. He recently came out of his catatonic state and now he has a goal: to have his own farm so he could retire and indulge in his true passions: fishing, cooking and drinking. Unfortunately, since he didnt do much during cataclysm he ain't got a lot of money to buy his farm. A new inhabitant of Stormwind, a pandarean named Aysa Cloudsinger, talked to him about a long forgotten continent in the South Sea. Dreaming of forgotten treasure resting in abandonned temple just reap for the taking, he decided to join the Stormwind Navy for some mercenary works.

For this toon, I'll try to reach level 90 without leaving Pandaria to get more immersed in the story. So I'll see you there.